My Year of the War | Page 9

we must succumb, let it be now," said the French.
On, on--the German corps were coming like some machine- controlled
avalanche of armed men. Every report brought them a little nearer Paris.
Ah, monsieur, they had numbers, those Germans! Every German
mother has many sons; a French mother only one or two.
How could one believe those official communiqués which kept saying
that the position of the French armies was favourable and then admitted
that von Kluck had advanced another twenty miles? The heart of Paris
stopped beating. Paris held its breath. Perhaps the reason there was no
panic was that Parisians had been prepared for the worst.
What silence! The old men and the women in the streets moved as
under a spell, which was the sense of their own helplessness. But few
people were abroad, and those going on errands apparently. The
absence of traffic and pedestrians heightened the sepulchral appearance
to superficial observation. At the windows of flats, inside the little
shops, and on by-streets, you saw waiting faces, everyone with the
weight of national grief become personal. Was Paris alive? Yes, if Paris
is human and not bricks and stone. Every Parisian was living a century
in a week. So, too, was one who loved France. In the prospect of its
loss he realized the value of all that France stands for, her genius, her
democracy, her spirit.
One recalled how German officers had said that the next war would be
the end of France. An indemnity which would crush out her power of
recovery would be imposed on her. Her northern ports would be taken.
France, the most homogeneous of nations, would be divided into
separate nationalities--even this the Germans had planned. Those who
read their Shakespeare in the language they learned in childhood had no

doubt of England's coming out of the war secure; but if we thought
which foreign civilization brought us the most in our lives, it was that
of France.
What would the world be without French civilization? To think of
France dead was to think of cells in your own brain that had gone
lifeless; of something irreparable extinguished to every man to whom
civilization means more than material power of destruction. The sense
of what might be lost was revealed to you at every turn in scenes once
merely characteristic of a whole, each with an appeal of its own now; in
the types of people who, by their conduct in this hour of trial, showed
that Spartan hearts might beat in Paris-the Spartan hearts of the mass of
everyday, workaday Parisians.
Those waiting at home calmly with their thoughts, in a France of
apprehension, knew that their fate was out of their hands in the hands
of their youth. The tide of battle wavering from Meaux to Verdun
might engulf them; it might recede; but Paris would resist to the last.
That was something. She would resist in a manner worthy of Paris; and
one could live on very little food. Their fathers had. Every day that
Paris held out would be a day lost to the Germans and a day gained for
Joffre and Sir John French to bring up reserves.
The street lamps should not reveal to Zeppelins or Taubes the location
of precious monuments. You might walk the length of the Champs
Elysées without meeting a vehicle or more than two or three
pedestrians. The avenue was all your own; you might appreciate it as an
avenue for itself; and every building and even the skyline of the streets
you might appreciate, free of any association except the thought of the
results of man's planning and building. Silent, deserted Paris by
moonlight, without street lamps--few had ever seen that. Millionaire
tourists with retinues of servants following them in motor- cars may
never know this effect; nor the Parisienne who paid a thousand francs
to send her pet dog to Marseilles.
The moonlight threw the Arc de Triomphe in exaggerated spectral
relief, sprinkled the leaves of the long rows of trees, glistened on the
upsweep of the broad pavements, gleamed on the Seine. Paris was

majestic, as scornful of Prussian eagles as the Parthenon of Roman
eagles. A column of soldiery marching in triumph under the Arc might
possess as a policeman possesses; but not by arms could they gain the
quality that made Paris, any more than the Roman legionary became a
Greek scholar by doing sentry go in front of the Parthenon. Every
Parisian felt anew how dear Paris was to him; how worthy of some
great sacrifice!
If New York were in danger of falling to an enemy, the splendid length
of Fifth Avenue and the majesty of the skyscrapers of lower Broadway
and the bay and the rivers would become vivid to you in